Mapping Character
Journal 94 12-25 June 2023
I still don’t know how I feel about skipping weeks, but at the same time I don’t always have things to say every week. Not until I get back into the weekly writing routine again.
However, in this case I DID have things to write about last week, but I was out and about and unable to get the time in at the keys. Shitty excuse I know but we all have things that interrupt our scheduled lives.
In the last couple of blogs, I mentioned creating characters for a Cthulhu Game and then using the same method for a city in both my novel/forthcoming D&D game.
The Premise:
For those of you who don’t read every post, here is the concept.
I needed to create a bunch of “places of interest” and NPCs for a Call of Cthulhu game. I only had a map of the setting and a few wiki pages on it, as my copy of the book on the place was in storage.
Step 1, determine things I will need (hotel, police, diner, villains lair, places to research or learn about the lair).
Step 2, highlight buildings and label them for the needed locations.
Step 3, put “people” in these locations.
I did all of that and noticed that when I created the characters I started to come up with dark secrets, histories of these characters, their families, their houses/businesses. More and more story hooks presented themselves
Suddenly I had characters who had escaped from Innsmouth, survivors of previous adventurers, creatures pretending to be human, and just a hell of a lot of story.
Transfer Concept:
Read my last entry to get the link between character and setting/world-building.
I decided to take this gaming idea and bring it over to the map at the top of the page. Let’s populate the entire city of Dusk (I mean sort of, it’s a city of a million people). But I started to fill in the noble families, add in the colleges, guilds, the various commercial enterprises. The factions of the city started to take life.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
This work is interesting. As much as I’m making up things that feel and sound like they’re for gaming, this location is also the main setting for the next novel. I’ve started to create factions in the senate, hidden secrets, family lineages, and all sorts of groups that I didn’t think I’d need.
For example, I have crafted the three great brew houses in the city (and several lesser houses) all vying to have the best beer in the city. And I worked out what advantages each one had and how they were trying to take the top of the list. It might never come up in a game or even in the novel (other than to have a character snub one beer in favor of another), but it brings the setting to life.
Progress
As you can see in the map above, the city—at least the walled portion—is on 4 sheets of paper (11” x 17” each) Those 4 pages are then broken into three main sections, and each of those sections is broken into smaller neighborhoods.
As of this blog the top two sheets are completed, highlighted and loaded with people. Though I will admit that some of the locations need some work still. I haven’t completed filling them with ALL essential people.
The bottom half of the map (22” x 17”) has been highlighted and I’m currently labeling every building of interest, but I do not have people yet.
That might not sound like a lot… but to illustrate further I started to put the locations in one notebook and the people into another. The locations only get a short entry, name and some details on the building. But the people get at least a full paragraph, some get a whole page or more.
As of this morning I have filled one notebook (70 sheets, 140 pages) and am half way through a second notebook. That’s over 200 hand written pages of characters and still going. Haven’t even started the lower (larger) city.
Work and Pessimism
I’m enjoying the work. I have a sense of accomplishment and the creative parts of my brain are back on. Ideas and names are popping in my head. I look forward to my various sessions, which I just pepper throughout my day.
Unlike writing which I normally just do first thing in the morning. Sit down on my day off and hammer on the keys for a few hours. I can work on my maps and characters whenever I wish.
I’ve always appreciated things I can do between other things. Stop for lunch, open up a notebook and write with my right hand while eating with the left. Get to work an hour early? Spend that hour working on the map. Game got canceled and nothing on TV… read a book, or work on those characters. Etc. Etc.
I will admit that I feel the need to carry ALL of my notebooks so I can reference things. I have about 6 or 7 of them… a basic D&D notebook, 2 characters books, religion book, Dusk book, location book linked to the maps.
Other Work/ Maps
I also started a new map showing the near surroundings of the country and of course that needs a lot of writing about the countries all around. Most of these are sections I never ran in my teenage/20s years. They were places that were always on my maps and I knew what they were about… what they were based on.
But I didn’t run a lot of games in these places (plus that was 3 world maps ago and multiple editions of D&D. They were always planned for future consumption and we just never did it. It was always Martyr Empire or the midlands, or traveling rapidly around the world with mostly delving into the wilds of the countries but not the cultural centers).
Youth. I didn’t have as much knowledge as I do now.
In all cases I’m having a good time and I’m being creative again.
Media Consumption
I paused on my Universal Monster Movies. They are great but I needed to a break from them. Maybe it was the anniversary of D-Day, or maybe the fact that I’m working on scale models again, but I found myself delving back into WW2 history. I wanted to stop myself from watching Band of Brothers for the third… 4th time?
I spent the last 2 weeks watching a bunch of the more historically accurate War films. A Bridge too Far, The Longest Day, Bridge over the River Kwai, and a dozen other films. Today, when I’m done working on things will probably be the Great Escape.
I even started watching WW1 and Korean War movies as well, getting into the gaps in my knowledge.
Star Trek
Getting off the heavy subject of war I’m also still working my way through Star Trek. Last month I watched the Original Series and half of Enterprise. This month I’ve watched 5 seasons of the Next Generation and a few more episodes of Enterprise. I’m debating if I want to go so far as to watch Voyager again.
And before you comment, I watched all of Deep Space Nine just last year so I’m probably skipping that. I still need to watch Picard… though I’ve heard mixed things so I’m not excited for it. And Strange New Worlds is 2 episodes into the second season so I need to get on those. It’s the only modern trek I like.
Comics and other Reading
Book wise I’m mostly just reading a lot of non-fiction on modeling and diorama building and in comics I’m reading a ton of things.
Amazing Spider-man is still heavily mixed. Hellcat was a very interesting surprise. MacKay is still my recent favorite, Dr. Strange is good but not his best, but I’m intrigued by the mystery. I haven’t read the Avengers yet, but I’m hoping he does something great (even if this isn’t my ideal team).
I’m becoming tired of Venom… the Cates run was magic, the Ram/Ewing was a slog to get through in the beginning and I HATE Meridus, but it has started to come around again in the last few issues as Brock moves through to defeat Meridus.
Carnage has been really good, but now there is a crossover and I’m pausing reading that until all issues are out. I hate reading it out of order, so I’m waiting for all of it to be ready.
I read 20 other titles a month and I’m blanking on talking about them. Sad.
But that’s more of an effect of how my brain works than the writing on the books. Hulk was meh, though I love Ottley’s art so… and Cates quit in the middle of the book due to problems so the writing was only loosely outlined. New Incredible Hulk just dropped this week, haven’t got to it.
Zdarsky’s run on Daredevil is coming to an end and I hate to say I’m glad…. The first story arc was amazing. Loved it, but once he went to the island and the avengers were all written as jerk-offs, and Matt went off the deep end and we include the WORSE version of the Punisher (I read all those punisher books as well… but the whole making him a psycho as a child and making Maria a total POS as well… very unsatisfying story until the last page, the very last page makes it a little better, but I don’t like the retcon and Maria changes). Chip has two more issues to wrap up Daredevil, so maybe he’ll make it better for me, but the last 8 issues have been a slog to get through. His Batman run has been a little mixed as well.
Outro
Anyway… I don’t want to go out bitching about things I didn’t like. I would prefer to talk about what I love instead. But I’m still stuck on the bad… so I’ll be Thumper.
If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.
Thanks for reading this far and hopefully I’ll be back next week with more.
